Blog Flashback | Hack Attack, 23.03.2003

The first ‘OMG. They can do that?!’  moment in March 2003 was when the coalition hacked into the Iraqi state ISP servers and sent everyone who had an account with Iraqi’s only ISP a number of emails.

Granted, it’s not the most demanding of hacking jobs. They were sloppy there, so lazy that when the state wanted to check an email it thought was suspicious they would open it, read it, not even bother with changing its status to ‘unread’.. we used to get open emails in our inboxes.. anyway…

We have had another email attack, this time I was lucky again and have copies of those, the sender is something called [blablabla@hotpop.com]. I have not checked on that yet. Three of them are to army personnel and two to the general public in those they gave us the radio frequencies we are supposed to listen to. They are calling it “information Radio”.

I had did have copies of the emails, I kept them on floppy disks!!! how forward looking was that!

Four of the emails came from a hotpop account, one from a Lycos and another from a yahoo accounts. Below is the translated text of one email we got.

The world has united in a common cause. These countries have formed an alliance to remove the father of Qusay and his brutal regime. Qusay’s father has tyrannized the sons of the Euphrates and exploited them for years and he has to be removed from power.

The coalition forces are not here to hurt you, but they are here to help you. For your safety the coalition forces have prepared a list of instructions to keep you and your families safe. We want you to realize that these instructions are to keep you safe, even if they are, maybe, not fitting [.. that word is a bit odd.. it sounds like someone who isn’t an native Arabic speaker was translating the message.. I don’t get exactly what they mean, but it sure got my attention, are they going to ask me to stand naked in the garden or something?]. We add that we don’t want to hurt innocent people.

please and for your safety stay away from potential targets, like TV and Radio stations. Avoid travel or work near oil fields. Don’t drive your cars at night. Stay away from military buildings or areas used for storage of weapons. All the mentioned are possible targets. For your safety don’t be near these buildings and areas.

For your safety stay away from coalition forces. Although they are here for not your harm [sic] they are trained to defend themselves and their equipment. Don’t try to interfere in the operations of coalition forces. If you do these forces will not see you as civilians but as a threat and targets too.

Please for your safety stay away from the mentioned areas. Don’t let your children play there. Please inform your family and neighbors of our message. Our aim is to remove he father of Qusay and his brutal regime.